


IX, A Guardian's Tale

by bladetransform



Series: IX [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny, Gen, Post-Game: Destiny 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2020-10-24 22:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladetransform/pseuds/bladetransform
Summary: IMPORTANT UPDATE!This part of the story is complete. Part 2 will be uploaded soon, I'm currently working on it. Part 2 continues on from this story, but because it feels different to this story, I decided to make it it's own post. Thanks for reading!





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT UPDATE!  
This part of the story is complete. Part 2 will be uploaded soon, I'm currently working on it. Part 2 continues on from this story, but because it feels different to this story, I decided to make it it's own post. Thanks for reading!

Light. That's all I can see. Pure, bright nothingness. _Am I dead?_

“Hey! Guardian!”, a voice from my right startles me.

_Is that voice talking to me?_

“Hey! Wake up! We need to leave. Now.”

_I guess I'm alive then..._

My vision returns. I’m in a giant, gray desert of some sort. No buildings or civilization in sight. Just a vast expanse of black sand and nothing. I’m sitting down with my back against something. I try to look behind me, but a sharp pain in my neck stops me. Where am I? WHO am I? All of a sudden I can’t seem to remember anything.

“You’re awake, thank the Traveler. Listen, there’s a Cabal Goliath heading our way as we speak. We have to go.”

_What’s a Traveler?? What in god’s name is a goliath. It can’t be good._ I nod and shrug my shoulders to say “Where do we go?”

“There’s an abandoned fallen hideout a few miles out. We have to hurry.”

“Miles." It’s an American. I’m screwed. Wait. Where even is the voice coming from?

I snap my head to the right. It’s … well, I don’t know what the fuck that is. A diamond shaped white thing with a blue LED screen on the front. It’s floating. A robot? “W-what are ...you? Where am I?...Who am I?”, I croaked. My throat is dry. Not a good state to be running from a “goliath”, whatever that is.

“I’ll explain when we get there. Get up, you’ll get the hang of running from things soon enough”

_Fuck. More running after this?_

I get up, and the floating robot turns forward. “This way.”, it says. “Be quick. And try not to be too obvious.”

“We’re in a desert. Everything is obvious.”

“I know. Just try.”


	2. The Hideout

I’m out of breath. We’ve been running-well, I’VE been running- for what feels like hours. Does this robot know what a few miles is? I’m going to collapse. This is too much running. The landscape doesn’t seem to have changed one bit. No hideout in sight. This machine lies. I wish I was doing whatever I was doing before I woke up. I don’t know what I was doing. But I wish I was doing that.

A red flag appears on the horizon. “Finally, something that’s not desert,'' I mutter between breaths. 

“That’s it. We’re going to have to go deep in if we don’t want the Cabal finding us.”

“As long as I don’t have to run anymore.”

We make it there after a few moments. There doesn’t seem to be anything of importance there. Crates lay broken with pieces of red cloth and armor plates scattered all around. There’s a tunnel, or a hole, of some sort beside me. A weird four-armed corpse with a knife in it’s eye lays on the ground beside it, one arm inside the hole. _ What the fuck is that? Why does it have four arms and 8 eyes? _It doesn’t matter. I can stop running now, that’s all I care about. The ghost tells me to head into the hole. “I just scanned our vicinity, we’ll be safe in there, if the Cabal don’t come in too. If they can even fit in there.” the machine tells me.

Inside, there’s a horrible stench of rotting corpses. This place is full of them. _What happened here? What killed them?_ A dried black liquid is splattered all along the walls and floor. Weird green, glowing symbols are carved into the ground. “I don’t like the look of this place”, I stutter. My hands are shaking. I decide nows a good time to ask this machine what the hell is going on. “Where are we? Who are you? Who am **I**?”

“Listen. This is going to be a little hard to comprehend.”

_ Jesus christ. Is anything normal around here? _

“You were dead. I resurrected you. I’m a ghost, my job is to guide you, and to make sure you don’t die. You’re a guardian. MY guardian. The Traveler chose you to be my guardian. A wielder of light tasked with defending humanity from the dangers of the universe.”

_ Fuck. I didn’t sign up for this. Where is my consent form. _

“Why don’t I remember anything?”, I’m getting audibly frustrated now.

“I wish I knew. It’s just the way things are. No guardian remembers their past life, unless they had a diary, or something that can tell them about it.”

I’m getting dizzy now. I was dead. I wish I still was. Now I’m alive. And I have to protect the whole fucking human race. I love that for me. I dump myself on the ground, and a wave of exhaustion hits me. All that running was not good.

The “ghost” starts beaming a blue light on me. “What are you do-” I stop. My exhaustion is gone. I don’t feel thirsty anymore. “What the hell did you just do?”

“Healed you. It’s my job to make sure you don’t die.”

“Thanks, I guess” _ I really wish this dude would let me die. I don’t want this life. _

“Come on. Let’s keep going. The Cabal’s radars can still detect us this close to the surface.”

I get up and follow the ghost. “So what’s your name?”

“Frampt.”

“Cool name, what’s mine?”

“You don’t have one. You get to pick”

“Oh, cool. I don’t know any. I'll think of one eventually.”


	3. Twin Serpents

“We can rest here until they pass. Until then, we need to come up with a way off this moon.” 

“Yeah. You still haven’t told me where we are.”, I utter. _ This ghost is terrible at communicating. _

“Phobos. Moon of mars, bound to collide with the planet in a few decades.” 

“Hard luck. Where are we headed from here?”

“Old Russia, Earth. That’s where the Last City is. We can get you geared up and ready there. For now, we just have to use whatever we can find.”

“I’ll go look for a weapon or something, be right back”

“I have to come with you. It’s my job.”

I grunt, "Fine," and we begin traversing the intricate tunnel system in search of gear.

We enter a dark room. There’s no sunlight, or a lamp anywhere so I decide to turn back, but Mr. Ghost over here has a fancy flashlight! Good. There’s nothing much in here. Some overturned tables and broken chairs. More dead four-armed corpses. Nothing new. Then I see something gleaming in the corner of my eye. As I get close, I notice that it’s a small knife. It has a bone loosely wrapped in a blood stained cloth for a grip, and a blade made of a deep, black metal._This will be useful. _ I juggle it in my hands, “perfect for throwing”, I say. It's perfectly weighted. It feels ... familiar somehow, like I've used it before. I notice a faded engraving on the side, "Kaath" _Odd. But it sounds like a cool name._

"Kaath," I say out loud.

"What?"

"Kaath. That's my name now."

"I like it. Good choice"

We continue scavenging. I come across some kind of e-book or something. Weird language written on it. I decide to keep it thinking it could prove useful somehow. After a few more hours, we’ve amassed a good supply of weapons and tools, now all that’s left is picking my favorites.

4 guns. A red sidearm, with a faded phoenix print on the grip, an unwieldy sniper rifle with a green 2 snake symbol, an auto rifle with a cracked sight, and a grimy, old hand canon, with faded text on its side. The hand canon had something about it. It looked… grand, and fancy. It looks horrible right now, but I’m sure it’ll look a lot better after I fix it up at this “Last City” place. I picked it up and weighed it in my hand. It felt perfect, like it was built for my hands._ First the knife, now this. Strange_. I grab a hand grenade and check my pocket for that knife I picked up earlier. I snagged a red cloak from one of the corpses and made it my own. All set. I'm a full blown renegade. Now we wait for that tank to pass. _Might as well close my eyes for a bit while we wait..._


	4. Escape

I jolt awake to the ground beneath me shaking. “What’s going on??” My brain scatters, looking all around the room for an escape. But there are none. Rocks shake loose from the ceiling, covering my exits. Then, all of a sudden, all the green runes on the floor begin glowing with a blinding light and a shrill scream erupts from below. The scream makes me wince with agony, and my head feels as though it was getting eaten from the inside out. “Come…..to ussss…… we…...will guide you……oh apprentice mine …….”a voice whispers to me, deafeningly loud but unbearably soft at the same time.

_ Wh- what was that…? _ My head doesn’t hurt anymore, the runes have stopped glowing, and the ground has settled. Kurys is scanning the surroundings, beaming blue light all around it. “There’s nothing around us. No sign of life. The tank is right above us but… there’s no Cabal around all of a sudden. Those runes must have something to do with it.” it says. 

“D-did you hear the scream..? And the voice?”

_ Please say yes please say yes please say yes... _

“What scream? I didn’t hear anything like that. What did the voice say?”

_ Fuck. _“Never mind. It was probably just in my head.”

There was a long moment of silence before I suggested we leave this tunnel.

I see an opening at the corner of my eye, and point to it. I can barely speak, the earthquake and the scream left me with a dry throat somehow. The opening is small, but I manage to climb out. It opens into an even larger room, with a big round table with seats all around it. More corpses, but this time they’re bigger.

“Someone’s killed this entire Fallen house. Even the Kell is dead.”

“Kell?”

“It’s what the fallen call their leader. It runs each house.”

_ Something went terribly wrong down here. We need to leave. Now. _

Light shines down from the roof, and I look up to see a hole. I can see the clusters of faraway stars, and the occasional ship flying past. “That way,” , I say as I point to the opening. I climb through, relieved to be back on the barren gray surface. “Now what?”

“We need to find a way off this moon. Luckily, I know a group of Guardians on this moon who can spare us a ship”

“They sound nice”

“Oh no… They're the furthest thing from nice.”


	5. Chapter 5

“It’s literally my first day alive can I get some kind of discount? I don’t have 10 relic shards! I don’t even have one!”

_ This is going to be a long day. _ I’ve been trying to get a spare ship from these guys for 3 hours. I haven’t left because I had nowhere else to go. I would’ve been gone a lot sooner  _ if _ I had a choice. All they’ve been doing is pushing me around and calling me “blueberry”. I don’t understand the significance of that insult but you know what.  _ It fucking hurts _ . I just want to get out of this damn moon and never come back. It’s just been setback after setback here. 

“Well there is  _ one _ other thing we can have you do…” says a voice from my left. A small, cloaked figure comes out of the shadows, grinning maliciously. It’s someone dressed in all black, with chains and knives hanging off its arms and waist. A large sword hangs on its back and a silver hand canon twirls in its hand. _ Who the fuck is that why do they look like that oh my god...this is NOT good _ . 

“I need 3 Cabal war beasts. Alive.” it orders. Its voice is raspy and scrapes my eardrums.

“H-how am I supposed to do that?” I stutter.

“I don’t know. It’s your problem now. You have 96 hours. Now go.”

I stare at him in shock. I don’t even know what a war beast is, but it sounds terrifying.

“I’d hurry up and leave if I were you,” he utters as he cocks his hand cannon.

I rush out of the building, wondering how I could get my hands on A War Beast without dying, let alone one. I sit myself down a distance away from the building, enough to be able to look at it, but not enough to be seen from it. It’s an abandoned Cabal base, tattered blue and yellow flags fluttering in the wind, and dead cabal bodies rotting all around it. It was impossible to tell that about 50 of the system’s biggest cunts were congregated there.

“Who even are those people?” I ask my ghost.

“They don’t have a name, but most people just call them The Assholes on Phobos. They’re notorious for exploiting civilians and new guardians for gear and antiques.”

“Antiques?? Who in the fuck has time to collect antiques when we have to fight a war with everything that isn’t human?”

“Not all guardians are good.”


	6. Fire and Dark

As the sun sets on the moon of Mars, I start to ponder on what I got myself into. I have to find 3 beasts, give them to a gang of immortal warriors or else they’ll kill me. Well I can’t die, but I’m sure there's a way. Otherwise the system would be overpopulated. Right? Honestly, I don’t know how anything works around here. I had spent the day looking for somewhere to spend the night, and found two. Well, one of them has a weird black space goo everywhere and the other doesn’t. I know which one I’m sleeping in. It’s a crashed beige ship, with red stripes and symbols emblazoned all over it. Smoke floats out of what I assume is the engine, _ It’s only crashed here recently _ . I don’t see anything suspicious around, and decide to take the risk. It’s not that spacious inside. Just a cockpit and some minimal storage. I take some of the red flags and cover the windows, to be hidden. 

I was looking forward to my first hours of sleep in this lifetime. UNTIL SOMETHING HAPPENED. Of course something happened. Nothing goes my way in this life.

Gunshots. Guttural screams rip the air. Bodies thud to the ground. Commands are yelled in a language I don’t know. My eyes are wide open. I rush to grab my gear, ready to make a run for it, when my ghost floats in front of me. “We’re surrounded,'' she says, “We can’t run from this. We have to fight.”

_ Fuck. _ I have yet to fire a gun in this life, I am not ready to either. I look around the ship,  _ It’s bound to get destroyed in the crossfire _ . “I can revive you if you die. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I know, I know. I just-”

I get cut off by a large explosion. Red fire covers my vision. My body burns, I can’t feel anything else. And then, darkness.


	7. A friend ?

I feel a wave of energy flood through my body, like water flooding into an empty channel. I feel dust particles landing on my bare arms and face as small pieces of dirt and rock hit my chest. A throaty scream fills the air, followed by a body falling onto me. A bright blue light in the corner of my eye catches my attention. Its Frampt. “Come on, we need to leave, Kaath!” he urges. I bolt up, and start running. Dozens of four armed creatures are behind me, no doubt trying to kill me. A blue ball of lightning flies over my head and lands by my feet. I jump over and continue my sprint. An explosion behind me, probably from that blue ball, launches me forward and I find myself face-down in the gray Phobian sand.

The blast shook me, and I struggle to get myself up again. Then, I hear footsteps running towards me, and a flash of purple. The temperature drops, and I hear a low hum all around me. The sounds of the battlefield are muffled, as if someone had put up a wall around me. I hear a stern yet reassuring voice say to me, “Get up guardian, do not lose hope.” I slowly get myself onto my knees and I’m greeted by a purple sphere surrounding me. _ So someone did put up a wall. Nice. _ I turn around to see a bulky masculine figure in navy blue armor. He has a large shoulder pad on his left arm, which sports the symbol of a lion. “Thank you,” I tell him, “I’m Kaath, I’m new to this guardian thing.”

“Ah, a new guardian. Welcome, I’m Zedron-3. I need you to get behind that building. Do you have a weapon?” he says while looking for enemies outside the wall. “OK” I mutter, still catching my breath. “And yeah, I have 2 weapons.”, I tell him before I rush myself over into the building. I can’t tell what kind of building it is, but I didn’t want to know. I found a guardian who wants to help. Thank god.

I hear Zedron-3 running into the building a short time later, trying to catch his breath. “There are way too many Fallen out there, I can’t fight them alone.”, he gasped.

“I’ll help,” I say. _Am I ready to kill something? They’re not human. It’s ok. They’re trying to kill us anyway._ I brush off some dust from my hand cannon. “Is that the Last Word?” Zedron-3 exclaimed, sounding like a child seeing a new toy for the first time.

“The what now?”

“The Last Word! It’s a rare Tex Mechanica weapon that Shin Malphur uses.”

“I...don’t know what any of that means. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, you’re new. That’s a great weapon to have.”  
“Thanks.”

He heads to the entrance of the building, and motions for me to come forward. “You see that vandal there? On the roof, with the sniper. I’m going to need you to kill it with your sniper. I can’t get him with my auto rifle, but I see you have a sniper with you.” he whispers.

“OK”, I mutter, trying my best to be confident. _ I got this. _

I unlodge my sniper from my back, and rest it under my shoulder. _ Just aim, and shoot. Easy. _ I look through the scope, aiming straight at the Vandal’s angular head. _ Inhale. _ A dull, piercing sound echoes in the air. My arm gets knocked backwards because of recoil. _ Exhale. _ The Fallen’s corpse falls from its perch, and I make a mental note of my first victim.

“You’re not a bad shot! You snipe often?” Zedron-3 exclaims.

“Well, uh, this is my first time shooting a gun”

“Hah! You’re goin places kid.”

“Speaking of going places. Do you have a ship that can take us to the Last City?”

“I do, actually. Need a ride?”


End file.
